


Baking, Bungus, and Big Wolf on Campus

by ValidKorekiyo



Category: The Valids
Genre: Baking, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Texas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 04:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18731581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValidKorekiyo/pseuds/ValidKorekiyo
Summary: Valid Shuichi tries to bake cookies for Valid Akechi, in the midst of the hunt for the beautiful and elusive Valid Korekiyo, a detective cat-and-mouse chase that leaves him yearning for some resolution in a world where the relentless Texan sun takes no prisoners.





	Baking, Bungus, and Big Wolf on Campus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ValidKorekiyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValidKorekiyo/gifts).



There’s something beautiful next to something that hurts inside Shuichi’s chest, a little misalignment in the universe, an ancient song that calls out of people he used to know, or at least the person he used to be. Confusion mounts alongside his heartbeat almost every day now, the only thing in time with the blazing Texan sun; he had to forego his hat a long time ago to keep the heat off his body, and looking at people in the eyes scares him just as much these days as it did when he was the Ultimate Detective.

The role itself seems to sting whenever he looks at Akechi. How can he consider himself a detective, much less the one of the best, when he’s next to someone he admires so much? It’s a strange thing, to love someone completely and wholly, the surrendering of the mere concept of the _self,_ a feeling he’s thought he could feel many times before, but not like this. Not until now. And he's unsure for the most part how long it will last, and how much he trusts himself not to self-destruct and take the only good thing in the whole of Huntsville with him.

Wanting to do something special for his love, he decides to shun all that he thinks he’s good at and try something new. He knows that neither he nor Akechi have made time for themselves in a very long time; they rarely can even eat dinner together with the amount of work they have piling on them. The long and relentless search for Korekiyo - the beautiful, the bold, the _bald_ Korekiyo - leaves them weary. It’s only on Friday nights that they can rest a little, get together and watch Big Wolf on Campus, eating properly cooked chicken and talking about the days when Nebbie and Kate were alive. Shuichi finds that he can truly vent to Akechi, for he is the only person who can perform the perfect balancing act of listening and consoling, and he can unload his worries for hours alongside him, talking about Nebbie’s medium rare chicken, Kate’s ghost laundry that he has to clean, and all of the blocked pipes and bungal cookies that those not-quite passed over menaces taunt him with daily.

But cookies - now there’s a good idea. He thinks it might be quite nice to cook something for Akechi, a batch of freshly baked cookies with just a faint hint of coffee and tiramisu flavours, so that when he gets back from researching the case of the famed Korekiyo, he can rest a little without worrying about cooking something for dinner.

The recipe is fairly simple, and even with the self doubt that builds and bursts inside his chest, Shuichi thinks he might just be able to manage it. He mixes butter and sugar, adding in eggs and flour - it crosses his mind that, were Nebbie and Kate here, they’d probably goad him into eating the raw batter until he ended up with a pretty nasty case of diarrhoea. But they’re not here. He’s alone, and he doesn’t quite mind it, thinking only of how wonderful it will be when Akechi gets home and they can eat together, maybe even watch an episode or two of Big Wolf on Campus if their workload is light enough to pass up on.

Days like these were, for so long, a mere fantasy for him, a burning hope that couldn’t be attained with falsities such as commercialised despair from Team Danganronpa. And now they’re a reality, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Sometimes, it feels so good that he’s worried it’ll end all too soon, a supernova of inevitability that will crush him and leave him alone; he thinks of Kokichi, and how maintaining even a friendship with him has proven too hard after Danganronpa - they’re not similar enough to be friends, but not different enough to have anything worth talking about. They’re both just exhausted.

At least he’s kept himself out of jail. He can’t say as much for his fellow classmates from the killing game, a fact which depresses him every time he thinks about it. How could they have been so beautiful, so bright, so blazing in their talent and hope, and then become even less than ordinary once the game ended? Even thinking this way scares him, because it connects him to his pregame self, and the person he was when he wanted to die for glory instead of just to die.

Still, he’s not one to complain. He’ll just keep soldiering on, as he always does. And he has Akechi, someone who has never let him down. Akechi never expects anything that Shuichi can’t do, never taunts him with insecurities and inferiorities, he merely _exists,_ a fact for which Shuichi feels that the universe must have some form of goodness in order to let this happen. He’d go as far as saying that the universe itself spent all of its energy and creative potential in creating Akechi, and then let the rest of the world go to hell. Not that he cares much about that.

When he takes the cookies out of the oven, they look okay. Not perfect, but okay, and that seems to do just enough for him.

And then, as if the universe wills it so, Akechi is home. Shuichi is greeting him by the door, and they’re walking into the living room, and Shuichi is loading up Big Wolf on Campus, and he’s showing Akechi the cookies, and Akechi is taking a bite, and…

“Shuichi…”

“Yes?”

“Are you pranking me?”

“What? I…”

“These cookies…have you put…human shit in them?”

“What? _No!”_

“Haha, my bad. It’s just…they taste so…so utterly terrible!”

“I…I thought…”

Laughter explodes through the room, but neither Shuichi nor Akechi are responsible. It’s two distinct accents, howling and crying and giggling, and Shuichi turns around to see the semi-translucent bodies of Kate and Nebbie.

“You fucking…!” Shuichi shouts.

“Sorry, bud,” Nebbie says, patting Shuichi on the shoulder with a hand that goes straight through him, “toilet’s blocked and I needed a place to take a fat fucking shit.”

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings, Guujlings. I hope you Enjoyed my writing. Please, link this Fanned Fiction to @validshuichi and @ValidAkechi on Twitter. I am sure they will enjoy my Musings.
> 
> Criticism will result in a Skinning.


End file.
